Blog Posts by Futuresource Analysts

The latest movement in the escalating US-China trade war has seen restrictions placed on US companies conducting business with Huawei, which has resulted in Google announcing that Huawei will now no longer have access to the latest updates to Android, the operating system that powered nearly 200M Huawei smartphone sales in 2018.
As noted by Future ...

A hearable is defined as an intelligent in-ear audio product that uses wireless technology to connect via a smartphone or other device that streams content from the Internet. Hearables improve the listening experience through application of noise cancellation and audio enhancement technology, or through advanced features such as translation and voi ...

Entertainment giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Apple are all striving to be the ‘Netflix of Gaming’, making announcements about new cloud gaming platforms or ‘digital only’ consoles like the Xbox S1. Their targets? The ‘digital natives’ a segment that have grown up without discs and are totally unfamiliar with the sluggish cartridge loadin ...

A key lesson learnt in the wearables market is that sport sells. With the ‘digital fitness wave’ gathering momentum and driving developments of hardware and software in a variety of sporting verticals, Futuresource has conducted a study looking at the role of wrist-worn wearables in sport. Health and fitness tracking have been a staple of different ...

The market for hearing enhancement products is set for disruption. Leading consumer electronics brands are now impinging upon the traditional markets for hearing aids by adding technologies that transform earphones into the growing category of hearables.
Today the hearing correction market presents an opportunity of 24 million devices annually, wi ...

Huawei have long since shed the perception of ‘copycat China,’ which overshadowed its early years as a smartphone vendor, and in recent years the company has enjoyed enviable growth to become one of the world’s top vendors of smartphone, competing with both Apple and Samsung for market share. Much of this growth has come as a result of some impress ...

It’s show time. That’s what Apple is telling us in the run up to its 25th March event, heavily suggesting a new SVoD service launch. It’s a move that has been anticipated here at Futuresource Consulting and across the industry for a number of years now. We’ve been playing out the scenario in our recent Futuresource Video Insights reports and evalua ...

Google made a hard-hitting announcement on March 19th at the GDC in San Francisco, placing it as a direct competitor to rivals Microsoft, Sony and Steam all at once, announcing the imminent launch of their ‘Stadia’ gaming platform. Rollout will occur later this year and Stadia will initially be available in Europe and North America. Stadia will be ...

Those of you in the television broadcast industry will know that once in every decade a new video compression scheme appears that delivers even greater efficiencies over previous generations. MPEG-2 held the crown through the 1990’s, H.264 (AVC) took centre stage during the mid-2000’s, then H.265 (HEVC) promised to depose all others from around 20 ...

With the Mobile World Congress 2019 show only weeks away, many handset vendors will release details of their first 5G smartphones. Conversely, most operators are only just embarking upon roll out of their 5G services in each region. So is the industry truly ready for 5G, or are those early adopters going to be disappointed?
Telecommunications pr ...

Here at Futuresource Consulting we deliver specialist research and consulting services, providing market forecasts and intelligence reports. Since the 1980s we have supported a range of industry sectors, which has grown to include: CE, Broadcast, Entertainment Content, EdTech and many more.